The Joy Audit
A diagnostic for people starting over who don't know what joy looks like for them yet. Not a personality test. Not a prescription. An audit: you already own the answers. We're just finding them.
Welcome to the Joy Audit. I'm 40, starting my life over, figuring out what joy actually means to me, not the version I was conditioned to want. It's giving me the courage to reach for things I used to talk myself out of. Like moving to a whole new country. These are the tools. So you can find yours too.
One card a day
The deck is the long version of this shelf. Forty questions, handed over one at a time, and your answers stay yours. No score, no streak, nothing to keep up with.
Open the deckPut a number on what you are tolerating, in money and in hours, and see the month that changing pays for itself.
One hundred and sixty eight hours, where they went, and how many of the leftover ones you would choose again. Four minutes, every Sunday.
The people and standing commitments in a normal month, weighted by how often they come round, ending with the three heaviest things you are carrying.
Forty questions, one a day, no score at the end of any of it.
I Used To
Before life got practical, you loved things. Loudly, specifically, without a business case.
Fill these in. Fast answers beat true-sounding answers. The fast one usually IS the true one.
Mine was a glitter punk hat. I'm serious. There's a whole story on the shelf about it.
Envy as data
Envy gets treated like a character flaw. It's actually a compass with bad manners.
Nobody sees your answers. That's the point. This is the one place you don't have to perform being fine.
Whose want is it
Some of what you're chasing was installed, not chosen. This is the hardest part of the audit and the most freeing.
This part is why I sold a business with my name on the building. Not because it failed. Because it stopped being mine to want.
The smallest reclaimable joy
Audits end with an action or they're just journaling with extra steps. One action. Small enough to survive a busy week.
The full library is 40 tools. They arrive here one at a time, each one after I've run it on my own life first. That's the deal. Two are already waiting: I Used To (the glitter hat story) and The Envy Test (the friend who moved abroad).
Voor de buren: 'gezellig' staat niet in dit gereedschap. Dat hoeft ook niet. Jullie hebben het al. 🧡